Vivian Faith Prescott is a fifth generation Alaskan and she lives in Sitka and Kodiak, Alaska. She holds a PhD in Cross Cultural Studies and an MFA from the University of Alaska, Anchorage. She is the Co-Editor of Flashquake.org and the Co-Director of a non-profit called Raven's Blanket based in Wrangell, Alaska, designed to perpetuate the cultural wellness and traditions of Indigenous peoples through education, media, and the arts. Her poetry and prose have appeared in Cirque, Turtle Quarterly, and Drunken Boat. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee and recently won the Jason Wenger Award for Literary Excellence. Her first book of poetry "The Hide of My Tongue" will be published by Plain View Press in the fall of 2011. Her digital chapbook "Slick" appears online at White Knuckle Press.

Four Poems (September 20, 2011. Issue 31.)

Story Traveling

I took the big iron rod down there and put it in the tundra. –Marvin Mangus, geologist, on the discovery
of oil in Alaska.

On the eve of tomorrow he stands in his own footprint, once a shallow ocean; sinks his boots into the sedge and caribou moss. Beneath him triassic, ivishak sand-stone, a sadlerochit formation. He hears the kissautqaq pounding and dances to story. He remembers walking with his grandmother. She warned him about tiritchiq, a dragon creature with scales, a long neck and small head. He recalls her gloved hand in his, whispering, "Kipakkutaieeiq." She bent low, fingering the plants on the tundra: maniq, kanufiq, tinnik.

23 Camp Rules

Auntie worked in Skinny City along the length of the Trans Alaska pipeline. Sourdough, Five Mile, Old Man, and Happy Valley. $15 dollars an hour. 84 hrs a week. Fly tapes of Police Story and M*A*S*H in from California. Welding certificate traded for an apron at the cookhouse. Ignore the 23 camp rules booklet someone handed her the first day on the job. Survive with her own rules: wear shirt buttoned to neck, clothes one size too large, look over your shoulder, look over your other shoulder, don't trust a 798er, wear kick-ass boots, sleep with a knife under your pillow.

Formation

     The remains of the living. 
He says we can't move. Can't build a new house.
     Dead material in the bottom of swamps, 
     ocean, 	riverbeds. 
So we move out when the oilman fills the tanks 
behind our house. We drive around in the dark. Four 
kids asleep in the back seat. 
     In that tiny space in underground rock, it is 
     trapped.
We park and watch the moon that isn't there. 
     The rocks fold, trapped.
Wiper blades keep rhythm to the pulse of diesel from 
the barge up through the veined hose to the tank farm. 
Filling the tanks, filling our house.
     Trapped.

Superfund

He flew in with his red cape on and landed on our front porch. He stood wide-legged, hands on hips, and announced he was there to save us. He leaped off the porch and zipped around like a dirt devil, digging a dozen test pits in our front and back yard. He scooped up some dirt and sniffed it. He let fall a handful, stuck his chest out, the big "S" shield oozing guck, stains to his knees, and declared the site "cleaned." And when he leaped into the sky, his chromosomes deleted their long arms and his double-strands broke, raining diesel down on top of us.